TY - THES A1 - Herold, Jana T1 - International Bureaucracies as Governance Actors BT - an assessment of national stakeholders' perspectives N2 - This study assesses and explains international bureaucracies’ performance and role as policy advisors and as expert authorities from the perspective of domestic stakeholders. International bureaucracies are the secretariats of international organizations that carry out their work including generating knowledge, providing policy advice and implementing policy programs and projects. Scholars increasingly regard them as governance actors that are able to influence global and domestic policy making. In order to explain this influence, research has mainly focused on international bureaucracies’ formal features and/or staff characteristics. The way in which they are actually perceived by their domestic stakeholders, in particular by national bureaucrats, has not been systematically studied. Yet, this is equally important, given that they represent international bureaucracies’ addressees and are actors that (potentially) make use of international bureaucracies’ policy advice, which can be seen as an indicator for international bureaucracies’ influence. Accordingly, I argue that domestic stakeholders’ assessments can likewise contribute to explaining international bureaucracies’ influence. The overarching research questions the study addresses are what are national stakeholders’ perspectives on international bureaucracies and under which conditions do they consider international bureaucracies’ policy advice? In answering these questions, I focus on three specific organizational features that the literature has considered important for international bureaucracies’ independent influence, namely international bureaucracies’ performance and their role as policy advisors and as expert authorities. These three features are studied separately in three independent articles, which are presented in Part II of this article-based dissertation. To answer the research questions, I draw on novel data from a global survey among ministry officials of 121 countries. The survey captures ministry officials’ assessments of international bureaucracies’ features and their behavior with respect to international bureaucracies’ policy advice. The overall sample comprises the bureaucracies of nine global and nine regional international organizations in eight thematic areas in the policy fields of agriculture and finance. The overall finding of this study is that international bureaucracies’ performance and their role as policy advisors and expert authorities as perceived by ministry officials are highly context-specific and relational. These features vary not only across international bureaucracies but much more intra-organizationally across the different thematic areas that an international bureaucracy addresses, i.e. across different thematic contexts. As far as to the relational nature of international bureaucracies’ features, the study generally finds strong variation across the assessments by ministry officials from different countries and across thematic areas. Hence, the findings highlight that it is likewise important to study international bureaucracies via the perspective of their stakeholders and to take account of the different thematic areas and contexts in which international bureaucracies operate. The study contributes to current research on international bureaucracies in various ways. First, it directly surveys one important type of domestic stakeholders, namely national ministry officials, as to how they evaluate certain aspects of international bureaucracies instead of deriving them from their structural features, policy documents or assessments by their staff. Furthermore, the study empirically tests a range of theoretical hypotheses derived from the literature on international bureaucracies’ influence, as well as related literature. Second, the study advances methods of assessing international bureaucracies through a large-N, cross-national expert survey among ministry officials. A survey of this type of stakeholder and of this scope is – to my knowledge – unprecedented. Yet, as argued above, their perspectives are equally important for assessing and explaining international bureaucracies’ influence. Third, the study adapts common theories of international bureaucracies’ policy influence and expert authority to the assessments by ministry officials. In so doing, it tests hypotheses that are rooted in both rationalist and constructivist accounts and combines perspectives on international bureaucracies from both International Relations and Public Administration. Empirically supporting and challenging these hypotheses further complements the theoretical understanding of the determinants of international bureaucracies’ influence among national bureaucracies from both rationalist and constructivist perspectives. Overall, this study advances our understanding of international bureaucracies by systematically taking into account ministry officials’ perspectives in order to determine under which conditions international bureaucracies are perceived to perform well and are able to have an effect as policy advisors and expert authorities among national bureaucracies. Thereby, the study helps to specify to what extent international bureaucracies – as global governance actors – are able to permeate domestic governance via ministry officials and, thus, contribute to the question of why some international bureaucracies play a greater role and are ultimately able to have more influence than others. KW - international bureaucracies KW - international organizations KW - governance KW - expert authority KW - policy advice KW - national ministries KW - internationale Verwaltungen KW - internationale Organisationen KW - Governance KW - Expertenautorität KW - Politikempfehlungen KW - nationale Ministerien Y1 - 2019 ER - TY - THES A1 - Nasery, Mustafa T1 - The success and failure of civil service reforms in Afghanistan T1 - Erfolg und Misserfolg der Reformen im öffentlichen Dienst Afghanistans BT - a critical study of reforms in a fragile and conflict-affected state BT - eine kritische Studie der Reformen in einem fragilen und konfliktbeladenen Staat N2 - The Government will create a motivated, merit-based, performance-driven, and professional civil service that is resistant to temptations of corruption and which provides efficient, effective and transparent public services that do not force customers to pay bribes. — (GoIRA, 2006, p. 106) We were in a black hole! We had an empty glass and had nothing from our side to fill it with! Thus, we accepted anything anybody offered; that is how our glass was filled; that is how we reformed our civil service. — (Former Advisor to IARCSC, personal communication, August 2015) How and under what conditions were the post-Taleban Civil Service Reforms of Afghanistan initiated? What were the main components of the reforms? What were their objectives and to which extent were they achieved? Who were the leading domestic and foreign actors involved in the process? Finally, what specific factors influenced the success and failure Afghanistan’s Civil Service Reforms since 2002? Guided by such fundamental questions, this research studies the wicked process of reforming the Afghan civil service in an environment where a variety of contextual, programmatic, and external factors affected the design and implementation of reforms that were entirely funded and technically assisted by the international community. Focusing on the core components of reforms—recruitment, remuneration, and appraisal of civil servants—the qualitative study provides a detailed picture of the pre-reform civil service and its major human resources developments in the past. Following discussions on the content and purposes of the main reform programs, it will then analyze the extent of changes in policies and practices by examining the outputs and effects of these reforms. Moreover, the study defines the specific factors that led the reforms toward a situation where most of the intended objectives remain unachieved. Doing so, it explores and explains how an overwhelming influence of international actors with conflicting interests, large-scale corruption, political interference, networks of patronage, institutionalized nepotism, culturally accepted cronyism and widespread ethnic favoritism created a very complex environment and prevented the reforms from transforming Afghanistan’s patrimonial civil service into a professional civil service, which is driven by performance and merit. N2 - Die Regierung wird einen motivierten, leistungsbasierten, leistungsorientierten und professionellen öffentlichen Dienst schaffen, der den Versuchungen der Korruption widersteht und effiziente, effektive und transparente öffentliche Dienstlesitungen anbietet, die Kundinnen und Kunden nicht dazu zwingt, Bestechungsgelder zu zahlen. — (GoIRA, 2006, p. 106) Wir waren in einem schwarzen Loch! Wir hatten ein leeres Glas und unsererseits nichts, um es zu füllen! Deshalb haben wir alles angenommen, was uns jemand anbot; so wurde unser Glas gefüllt; so haben wir unseren öffentlichen Dienst reformiert. — (Früherer Berater der IARCSC, persönliches Interview, August 2015) Wie und unter welchen Umständen wurden die Reformen des öffentlichen Dienstes in Afghanistan nach Ende der Taliban Zeit initiiert? Was waren die Ziele der Reformen und in welchem Maß wurden sie erreicht? Wer waren die führenden in- und ausländischen Akteure, die am Prozess beteiligt waren? Welche spezifischen Faktoren haben den Erfolg und Misserfolg der Reform des öffentlichen Dienstes Afghanistans seit 2002 beeinflusst? Diesen grundlegenden Fragen folgend, zeichnet diese Forschungsarbeit den verhängnisvollen Prozess der Reform des afghanischen öffentlichen Dienstes in einem Umfeld nach, in dem eine Vielzahl kontextueller, programmatischer und externer Faktoren die Ausgestaltung und Umsetzung der Reformen beeinflussten, die ausschließlich von internationalen Gemeinschaft finanziert und technisch unterstützt wurden. Die qualitative Untersuchung konzentriert sich auf drei Komponenten der Reform – Einstellung, Vergütung und Bewertung der Beamtinnen und Beamten – und liefert ein detailliertes Bild über den öffentlichen Dienst vor der Reform und der Hauptentwicklungen im Personalwesen in der Vergangenheit. Nach einer Diskussion über Inhalt und Zweck der wichtigsten Reformprogramme, zeigt die Studie das Ausmaß der Veränderungen in Politik und Praxis auf, indem sie die Ergebnisse und Auswirkungen der Reformen untersucht. Darüber hinaus definiert die Studie spezifische Faktoren, die dazu geführt haben, dass die meisten der angestrebten Reformziele nicht erreicht wurden. Dabei untersucht und erklärt sie, wie ein überwältigender Einfluss der internationalen Akteure mit widersprüchlichen Interessen zusammenwirkte mit großangelegter Korruption, politischer Einflussnahme, Netzwerken von Klientelismus, institutionalisiertem Nepotismus, kulturell akzeptierter Vetternwirtschaft und weit verbreiteter ethnischer Patronage. Dieses sehr komplexe Umfeld verhinderte grundlegende Reformen und die Transformation eines patrimonialen öffentlichen Dienstes in einen professionellen, leistungsorientierten öffentlichen Dienst in Afghanistan. KW - public administration KW - civil service reform KW - public administration reform KW - fragile and conflict-affected states KW - governance KW - international cooperation KW - Verwaltung KW - Reform des Öffentlichen Dienstes KW - Verwaltungsreform KW - fragile und konfliktbeladene Staaten KW - Governance KW - internationale Zusammenarbeit Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-444738 ER - TY - THES A1 - von Kaphengst, Dragana T1 - Project’s management quality in development cooperation T1 - Managementqualität von Projekten in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit N2 - In light of the debate on the consequences of competitive contracting out of traditionally public services, this research compares two mechanisms used to allocate funds in development cooperation—direct awarding and competitive contracting out—aiming to identify their potential advantages and disadvantages. The agency theory is applied within the framework of rational-choice institutionalism to study the institutional arrangements that surround two different money allocation mechanisms, identify the incentives they create for the behavior of individual actors in the field, and examine how these then transfer into measurable differences in managerial quality of development aid projects. In this work, project management quality is seen as an important determinant of the overall project success. For data-gathering purposes, the German development agency, the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), is used due to its unique way of work. Whereas the majority of projects receive funds via direct-award mechanism, there is a commercial department, GIZ International Services (GIZ IS) that has to compete for project funds. The data concerning project management practices on the GIZ and GIZ IS projects was gathered via a web-based, self-administered survey of project team leaders. Principal component analysis was applied to reduce the dimensionality of the independent variable to total of five components of project management. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis identified the differences between the separate components on these two project types. Enriched by qualitative data gathered via interviews, this thesis offers insights into everyday managerial practices in development cooperation and identifies the advantages and disadvantages of the two allocation mechanisms. The thesis first reiterates the responsibility of donors and implementers for overall aid effectiveness. It shows that the mechanism of competitive contracting out leads to better oversight and control of implementers, fosters deeper cooperation between the implementers and beneficiaries, and has a potential to strengthen ownership of recipient countries. On the other hand, it shows that the evaluation quality does not tremendously benefit from the competitive allocation mechanism and that the quality of the component knowledge management and learning is better when direct-award mechanisms are used. This raises questions about the lacking possibilities of actors in the field to learn about past mistakes and incorporate the finings into the future interventions, which is one of the fundamental issues of aid effectiveness. Finally, the findings show immense deficiencies in regard to oversight and control of individual projects in German development cooperation. KW - development cooperation KW - project management quality KW - evaluation KW - GIZ KW - knowledge management KW - Entwicklungszusammenarbeit KW - Qualität des Projektmanagements KW - Evaluierung KW - GIZ KW - Wissensmanagement Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-430992 ER -